Marco Baldini: Maniera

When Marco Baldini's first ever album, Vesperi (reviewed here), was released by Another Timbre in 2023, its arrival was not exactly awaited with bated breath. Born in 1986, near Florence, Italy, Baldini had no degree in music or composition and had not studied with an established composer. He had attended university, where he studied Roman archaeology, specialising in the iconography of early Christian sarcophagi. He worked as a public librarian in a village in the hills surrounding Florence. His only musical tuition had been when he learned trumpet in the village school band as a child.

Alongside composer and pianist Daniela Fantechi and bass clarinetist Edoardo Ricci, Baldini was a member of the improvising trio Blutwurst, founded in 2011. In 2014 they ceased improvisation and only performed written compositions. Baldini started composing, mainly sharing the process with the academically-trained Fantechi. The 2020 Covid lockdown gave Baldini time to devote to composition and to develop. The seven pieces he wrote for Vesperi largely featured cellos and double basses, giving the music its distinctive sound and atmosphere. That album attracted positive reviews from a range of sources and the CDs sold out quickly. (It is downloadable, though, for anyone who missed out on the CD.)

All of which brings us to Baldini's second album, Maniera. Although the music is all performed by members of Apartment House—a sign of the esteem now afforded to Baldini—the sound is rather more varied than that on Vesperi, largely string-driven quintets, quartets or trios, the album having its own distinctive sound. The six pieces all date from 2021 to 2023, with one of them—"Trio 2"—being heard in two distinct versions, violin, viola and cello and two violins and viola. Anyone familiar with Vesperi would be likely to identify the music here as Baldini. On this evidence it seems highly likely that he will continue onward and upward for the foreseeable future.